


Ripples

by Assido_Mina



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Angst, Bad Parenting, F/M, Insomnia, M/M, Nightmares, Polyamory, Polythieves (Persona 5), Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:22:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23720764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Assido_Mina/pseuds/Assido_Mina
Summary: Moving on isn't easy, especially when you feel you have to do it alone. Back home in Inaba, away from the people that he's come to consider family, Akira has to come to terms with life in a town that hasn't changed in the slightest, when he couldn't have possibly changed more.A lofty goal, even to someone who hadn't discovered another realm that lay in the shadows of Tokyo.If only he could get to sleep at night.
Relationships: Kurusu Akira/Sakamoto Ryuji, Kurusu Akira/Sakamoto Ryuji/Takamaki Ann, Kurusu Akira/Takamaki Ann, Sakamoto Ryuji/Takamaki Ann
Comments: 5
Kudos: 65





	Ripples

“Well, here we are,” Makoto said, more to herself than the others, eyes scanning the sight in front of the windshield, “Inaba. Your… home, I suppose.”

Akira chuckled to himself, pushing himself up from where he’d been slouched between Ann and Ryuji, stretching his neck and wincing at the pop on top of his spine. “Like I never even left, how about that?”

Ryuji smiled wide, all but kicking the van door open and stepping out onto the grass, breathing deeply and throwing his arms out. “Inaba!” He screamed, attracting a glare or two from passersby but content to focus on the way his voice echoed into the distance. “I’ve never been out to the country like this, you never told us you lived out here!”

“Didn’t I?” Akira asked, smile slightly strained, “Weird, I thought I would have mentioned it. Oh well.”

He slipped out of the van, feeling his knees crack when he extended them and disguising the instinctive gasp at the feeling. Even a few months later, his body certainly hadn’t forgotten everything that it had been through, pre-capture and post. Occasionally it liked to remind him, but he could at least keep that his own secret.

“Inaba, population not many. It’s… home.” He took a moment to sniff at the air, finding that he didn’t like how… clean it was, used to the scent of exhaust and heat that you could only ever really find in the city, no matter how clean said city tried to be. He’d only been back all of two minutes, and already he was regretting it.

“So what did you used to do here for fun?” Ann asked, resting her hand on his shoulder and placing her chin on top of it, the proximity between them long since failing to make him blush, “Tip cows? Race tractors? That sort of thing?”

“Is there a fight club or something out here?” Futaba drawled, shrinking away when one of the local birds chirped next to her ear, “How were you not bored to death?”

“Who says I wasn’t?” He muttered to himself, before turning around and smiling, “Come on, I’ll show you around before you go, you may as well get to see the sights.”

“Hmm?” Haru raised her eyebrows, mouth forming a surprised ‘o’. “Isn’t anyone meeting you here?”

"Nope, you guys are all I need anyway." With his back to them, he missed the concerned glance that they exchanged, already stepping forward in the direction of town. "Come on, we've got some time left."

Taking them through town took a much shorter amount of time than he’d been expecting, the route from the road to the floodplain taking all of twenty minutes, the birds chirping easily in the still air while they stared out at the calm water. Yusuke’s eyes lit up at the sight, his shoes already kicked off as he stepped down into the water, glancing around with an artist’s gaze while the others stayed back on the bank. “Such beauty, tranquility even with civilization so near…”

“It’s a floodplain Yusuke,” Akira chuckled, stepping into the water and ignoring the water soaking through his pants. Kneeling down and picking up a rock, he took aim and skimmed it along the surface, watching it stop and sink to the bottom as the ripples echoed outwards, before the water stilled. “Nothing beautiful about it, just… dark water, swallowing everything up. That’s all.” He smiled to himself, staring off into the distance and shaking his head. “Besides, you haven’t seen all the kids running here after they finish daycare, tranquility is the _last_ thing that you’ll find around here.”

Akira dropped to his knees, reaching down for another rock before he saw his reflection in the rippling water, sure that he could see a bruise on his cheek before Ann’s hand crept onto his shoulder, his breath exhaling in one go as he turned around and stared up at her with wide eyes. “Hey…” She whispered, backing away and holding her hands up, “Are you alright? You haven’t… seemed alright since we got here.”

He clenched his fist at his side, wrist stinging where the water lapped against them, closing his eyes and willing himself to control his breathing before he nodded. “Yeah… yeah, I’m fine,” He said, staring back down at his shaky reflection and seeing no evidence of a bruise, “Just… weird to be home.”

Walking along the bank, watching the ripples of the water around his ankles, Akira looked up at the sky that seemed too clear, nothing tall around them aside from the occasional mountain off in the distance. He wondered if it was possible to have vertigo in reverse, to feel like everything was too small, too short, so used to the towering expanses of Tokyo that looking around him just seemed… wrong, somehow. Too much space, so few people, too much space for the bad thoughts to find room to breath in the back of his skull, free to bounce around the plains of memory when he wanted nothing more than to just enjoy one last day with his friends.

Before he realized it his feet had carried him out of the water and along the road, wet shoes clacking against the asphalt as he looked up and registered the town in front of him, or at least the few shops and vending machines that made up downtown. If he was being honest it wasn’t too dissimilar to Yongen-Jaya, the only _real_ difference was that he could actually hear himself think when the cars went by.

“This is where you lived?” Ryuji asked, glancing around with wide eyes that almost seemed to bug out of his skull, “It’s… so _tiny_ dude!”

“Over there is a bottle store where you can just buy alcohol if you want, the guy that works there isn’t much older than we are so he doesn’t care.” Akira sniffed. “Kind of a dick, but whatever.”

“Why’s that?” Ann asked.

“We had a serial killer here a couple years ago and they killed his sister.” Pivoting on his heel and ignoring the look of shock on his friends’ faces, he started back towards the residential zone where his house lay. “Anyway, we should get moving.”

He didn’t particularly want to answer questions about the infamous serial killer, even if he understood the curiosity, he was pretty much still a little kid when it happened, and anyway he had bigger things to worry about right now. He was concerned enough with making it back to his house without collapsing in the street from grief, he didn’t have the mental space to spare for imagining someone else’s too.

Almost like a whip cracked against his spine, Akira straightened up and stood motionless at the corner of the street, head staring straight ahead even as he fought to turn it to his right, fingers twitching at his sides before forming into a fist. The others didn’t quite realize what was wrong at first, but they’d heard him talk about the events of that night enough that they recognized the street that they were on soon enough. It was strange, knowing that this was the street where he’d been framed should have made it seem… sinister, even maliciously evil, trash and blood all over the place was the image that he conjured up whenever he thought of it in the nights that he couldn’t sleep properly, but looking at it now… it just looked like any normal street that he’d walked past hundreds, thousands of times, a street that wouldn’t look out of place in Inaba or Tokyo. And that, perhaps, was the most disheartening thing of all. That one of the most horrifying locations in the world could be so… plain.

“Aki?” Ann asked, lacing their fingers together and stilling the trembling in his hand, “It’s ok, he’s not here anymore.”

He sighed, hanging his head and smiling bitterly to himself. Oh how he wished that she was right, but there was no real way that he could explain it to her, not in any way that seemed sane in the slightest. He would just have to keep those thoughts, and those dreams, purely for himself.

“I should be getting home now, I’ll walk you guys back to the car.”

“You don’t want us to walk you back?” Ann tried, smiling steadily even if her eyes weren’t quite in it. Ryuji stepped closer, taking his other hand and running his thumb along his knuckles, leg bouncing even as he tried to appear calm and collected, a lie that no one would have bought even in _normal_ circumstances.

“It’s fine,” Akira said, ignoring the voice chanting _tell them_ in his ear and squeezing their hands gratefully, the three of them sharing a look that made them all feel some amount of peace for the time being. “Come on, it’s going to get dark soon.”

Akira could still feel Ann and Ryuji’s parting kisses even hours later when he walked back from where he’d seen them off, taking some extra time walking around town before he made his way back home, taking the longer way through the houses than the one that had led him into this whole mess to begin with, fingers trailing along the rusted railings and drifting through the dry bushes growing through cracked concrete. It was hard to believe that he was back, and not because he was blessing his luck.

Twirling his fingers through hair that had grown longer during his time in prison, he opened his eyes and stared up at his house, two stories of plain wood just like every other house on the block, his fingers slipping through the gate like they had a thousand times before and pushing it inwards with a rusty creak. It was surreal, listening to his footsteps echoing against the wall like nothing had ever changed, feeling the splinter just above the door handle that he always managed to scrape with his thumb, so sure that if he just closed his eyes he’d be able to smell what he’d had for breakfast that day that everything had gone so irreparably wrong.

There was no smell of cooking food, no gasps of recognition when he stepped inside the threshold and kicked off his shoes, nothing except a quick rush of air before he shut the door behind him. In a small, sad way, it was nice to know that nothing had changed.

“I’m back!” He called, trudging down the hallway and letting his eyes flick towards every doorway that he passed by. The light in the living room was on, his gaze fixing on the middle aged man sitting in the armchair, flicking through his newspaper without any sort of interest in the person who had just entered his home. Before Akira could utter a word of greeting his mother pushed past him, readjusting her bag on her shoulder where it had jostled off.

“Get out of the doorway Akira, I’m already late as it is.” Checking her reflection in the mirror and sparing one glance his way, she sniffed and said, “Welcome back,” before she stepped out the door and let it fall shut behind her.

Staring back at the door before turning back, Akira didn’t spare a glance to his father sitting still uncaring in the living room, padding his way to the stairs and making his way up, searching for the once familiar door to his room, before he’d learned to call another place his home in his time away. It was odd, opening the door to the sight of dust covering all his belongings, like they hadn’t even bothered to open the door to let the air pass through, his bed huffing up a thick breath when he sat down roughly and collapsed backwards.

Here he was, in the place where he should have never left in the first place, wishing he was literally anywhere else, or maybe he was just hoping that he would wake up in the place that had become so familiar to him over the last year. To be completely honest, he didn’t know what it was that he wanted anymore, he thought this morning that what he wanted was to be home again, and now that he was here he was wondering if he actually still had something like that anymore, like it’s something that is just going to be denied of him from now on. To be honest, with the way his luck had been lately, he wasn’t going to count out becoming a drifter within the next twenty four hours, it would be fitting with the ten rounds that his life had been forcing him to sit through.

He wouldn’t say that he was hoping to keep thinking about all this, all the possibilities for what his life could possibly hold from now on, but even if he wanted to he couldn’t think straight with the way that his entire body seemed to go limp, clouds fogging up his mind and making his eyelids slip closed, his second to last thought being that it was almost time for dinner.

The last was that those days were over now.

Time moves differently when you’re asleep, hours passing by in what feels like minutes, seconds dragging by in hours, trapping you in a prison that you’re so deeply entrenched in you don’t even realize that opening the door out is as simple as opening your eyes. That was where Akira found himself, tossing and turning fitfully on top of the covers, sweat drenching his clothes until he looked like he’d thrown himself in the flood plain, heart racing in his chest and threatening to tear its way out through his ribs. Scowling guards, leering inmates, the oh-so-judgemental eye of the media when they looked at him, just another fuck up to be discarded into prison so they wouldn’t have to deal with the actual problem, all of it made the bruises on his ribs ache like someone had poured acid under his skin.

“No…” He moaned to himself, eyes darting back and forth behind closed lids, flinching every time a thin lipped memory connected with his cheek, badges shining in the harsh light of the interrogation room, cuffs cutting into the skin of his wrists and rubbing them raw. All the threats, vile and violent they had been, whispered harshly into his ear along with promises that it could all go away if he just signed the forms. Whispers that turned to harsh rebukes and harsher punches when he told them to go fuck themselves, his smirk only lasting until someone wiped it away with their boot.

He hadn’t wanted to admit it at the time, and still hadn’t admitted it to anyone except himself, but he’d been certain that he wasn’t going to make it out of that room alive. That one of those cops would decide that they’d gotten tired of playing around with him, that they’d put a bullet in the back of his head and drop him outside with the rest of the trash, let everyone else suffer with the thought of what could have happened to him.

Sometimes, on his darkest of nights, he thinks that maybe that’s what they did.

Akira’s hands tightened into fists, sweat pouring down his forehead and dripping into his eyes, stinging and making him fly upwards when the taste in his mouth started to resemble blood. His breath came in heavy pants, chest heaving and his sight returning in blurry shapes, nails digging crescent grooves into his palms, eyes roaming the darkness for the threat that had him on edge, before sense returned to him and he collapsed backwards in an exhausted heap.

It was far from the first time his sleep had taken a turn like this, Ann and Ryuji had experienced the first few times when he’d gotten out of prison, and it had been just as alarming for them as it had for him, maybe even worse. He hadn’t had to see himself fall apart bit by bit after all.

Not until now at least.

Swinging his legs out of bed until they hit solid wood below, he focused on the steadying shock of cold shooting up his legs, the sweat running down his face and chest chilling in the air and waking him up from the dark place that he’d been trapped in. Blinking slowly, counting to one hundred and keeping his breath steady, he felt himself becoming more himself with every second that passed by.

When he felt like himself again, he let his head fall forwards into his hands, palms digging into his eyes and scrubbing furiously as though he could scrape out what he’d seen, stamp it into the ground and leave it behind him like so many other scraps of dirt. Straightening up and taking a deep breath, he gasped as the skin tugged along his bruised ribs, hands pressing delicately to his side as a sob racked his body, teeth clamped so tightly over his bottom lip that he could taste copper.

Falling off the bed, just lightly enough to not wake his parents on the off chance that they would worry, Akira shuffled himself along the floor until he could feel his back pressed against the wall, following it along until he was nestled in the corner with his legs drawn up against his chest, arms wrapped around them and his eyes clamped shut. His hand blindly found his phone from where it had fallen to the ground when he’d thrashed around in his sleep, fingers squeezing around it so tightly that he could hear the creak of the case.

Sleep doesn’t come for him again that night, his thoughts consumed with maybe’s and what could have been’s, trying to will himself just to press his thumb on the call button and hear Ann and Ryuji’s voices, but no matter how hard he tried he just couldn’t bring himself to make a move, huddling down in the corner in hopes that whatever danger was after him would walk past him unaware.

A learned behaviour that he didn’t see himself losing anytime soon, no matter how much he wished it was different. By the time the sun rose over the horizon he could finally convince himself that he was safe, at least for the moment.

Of course, he knew it wouldn’t last.

**Author's Note:**

> Heya! This was meant to come out all at once as part of the P5 Dark Bang, but this fuckin lockdown man, killed my creativity stone dead. This fic will be getting finished though! I know I have many different WIP's that I've said that about before, but this isn't about them right now, so there!
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy, I'm looking forward to getting the rest out for you :3 Let me know what you think!


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